Live Atlanta Wrestling

[Oscar Knight]

1967: On the “Live Atlanta Wrestling” television program hosted by Ed Capral, Jack Crawford and Paul Jones joined Capral to discuss the pending suspension of El Mongol, and Crawford remained adamant that Mongol did not have to sign for a match waiving the disqualification rule to defend the Georgia Heavyweight Title. By the end of the discussion, Jones had made the suspension effective immediately, much to the dismay of Crawford and Mongol.

www.examiner.com/list/7-famous-pro-wrestlers-who-committed-murder/5-ox-baker

wrestlingnewscenter.blogspot.com/2007/12/georgia-wrestling-nostalgia.html

www.kayfabememories.com/Regions/gcw/gcw22-2.htm

Ox Baker has never killed a man. But his opponents have died wrestling the legendary grappler. In 1971, Ox Baker's opponent Alberto Torres died after taking Baker's finishing maneuver the Heart Punch. One year later, opponent Ray Gunkel had a heart attack during a match with Ox Baker. These two incidents were never Baker's fault, though he did use it to help sustain his career.

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ox_Baker

[Oscar Knight]

The Torres Brothers

www.onlineworldofwrestling.com/bios/t/torres-brothers/

Enrique Torres

Due to his success Torres' brothers Alberto and Ramon wanted to join him in wrestling. Enrique worked with Alberto and Ramon; Rachel, Enrique’s second wife, worked to help train Ramon in the various wrestling holds and tactics. In time, with hard work and training in Oakland, CA they received Enrique's blessing and later went on the road. The three went on to be involved in a 'Vachon-Torres Brother War' in Georgia against the Vachon wrestling family. In 1971 Alberto would be the first to die, as a result of a ruptured pancreas. Ramon would later die August 2000 of heart failure. In addition to his singles titles, Torres also held numerous tag team championships teamed with Bobo Brazil, Leo Nomellini, Ronnie Etchison, Johnny Barend, Jess Ortega, and his brothers in the 1950s and 1960s, ranging from Texas to the Central States territory.[1] Enrique and Alberto wrestled a headliner match in Havana, Cuba the night that the Batista regime fell to Castro’s rebel army in 1959 and returned to the US with the help of his Promoter, Benny Ginsberg and his connections in Cuba. Enrique retired in 1968 after one last run as a headline star, living in California and Nevada. In 1969 Enrique was asked to make a cameo appearance by Jimmy Lennon, a much loved sports announcer at the Olympic Auditorium in Los Angeles for a celebration of twenty-five years of televised wrestling. Enrique later moved with his third wife Kata Calgary, Alberta, Canada. In 2006, a Japanese reporter visited Calgary, Canada to meet and interview Enrique one last time. Enrique was highly respected and revered as part of the Japan Wrestling Association where he wrestled the Japanese Sumobasho circuit in the 1960s.

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Enrique_Torres

[Oscar Knight]

Ox Baker : Escape From New York

[Oscar Knight]

History

Georgia Championship Wrestling

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Georgia_Championship_Wrestling

Georgia Championship Wrestling was formed in Atlanta in 1944 by promoter Paul Jones as ABC Booking. ABC held its matches at Atlanta's Municipal Auditorium every Friday night. Jones operated ABC for thirty years until his retirement in 1974, though from about 1970 until 1972 he was assisted by his booker Ray Gunkel - in fact, Jones was so infirm by this time that Gunkel effectively ran the promotion. On Christmas Day of 1971, Georgia Championship Wrestling aired its first television show, which was considered a Christmas special, since the actual series didn't begin airing until late January 1972.

The promotion underwent some big changes in 1972. Firstly, it started promoting matches at the then-brand-new Omni Coliseum. Secondly, it switched its television outlet from its original home, WQXI-TV (now WXIA) to an upstart UHF station then called WTCG but later renamed WTBS (not yet a superstation, but still owned by Ted Turner; station in Atlanta is now WPCH-TV after being spun off from the national TBS cable channel).

The battle of Atlanta[edit]The new television deal would be one of Gunkel's last decisions. Ray Gunkel died of a heart attack later that year after a match versus Ox Baker in Savannah, Georgia. The death set off some internal problems, with Ray's widow Ann Gunkel, who had worked closely with Ray and expected to get his share of the promotion being shut out in favor of Bill Watts, with the promotion being renamed "Mid-South Sports." Ann Gunkel decided to start her own promotion outside of the National Wrestling Alliance, which she named the All-South Wrestling Alliance.

It didn't look good for Mid-South at that point, most of their wrestlers had gone with Ann, and Ann's promotion had gotten Mid-South's television time slot, though both promotions aired on WTBS. (Ted Turner and Ann Gunkel had both attended Brown University and were rumored to be romantically involved.) After two years of strife, a trouble-shooter was called in: Jim Barnett, who had owned promotions in Indiana, Michigan, Ohio, Colorado and Australia. (The Australian promotion was called World Championship Wrestling.) At this point, Ann's promotion went downhill, being locked out of arena dates, with wrestlers defecting to Mid-South, and finally Ann Gunkel's All-South Wrestling Alliance cried uncle in 1974.

THE COLLAPSE OF THE ALL-SOUTH WRESTLING ALLIANCE

www.georgiawrestlinghistory.com/viewfrominsidethering/articles/010.html

[Oscar Knight]